Derby Days

If I’ve told this story, forgive me, but it is one of my favorites from the Kentucky Derby.

It was 1996 and by then Robert Yates, Tom Luicci, Bill Handleman, Jerry Izenberg, Bob Summers and yours truly were regulars at table H in the old Churchill Downs press box.

We would have many visitors, but few ever requested to sit with us because Tom and Bill, who were best of friends, would argue about every horse and every race.

Tom works for the Newark Star-Ledger and Bill the Ashbury Park Press. We lost Bill and Bob last year.

Since there was room for 10 reporters at each table there would be new guys every year, although not long after that John Ferguson from the Tulsa World started enduring us on a regular basis.

That year they assigned 80-year-old Dave Feldman to sit with us. Next to me in fact.

Feldman had been writing horse racing for the Chicago Sun Times for more than 60 years. Some of that time he was also a handicapper and a thoroughbred trainer. Maybe a bookie too, who knows?

I don’t know what he was like earlier in his life but by then he was cranky, and refused to used a computer. He would hammer out his prose on an old typewriter and someone would retype it on a laptop and send it.

Churchill provided him the typewriters. He loudly disapproved of the first and the second, and he profusely hated the third. By the end of the fourth race I had no place to put my feet. That’s where he put the typewriters he didn’t like.

Finally I started moving them back to where they came from and he yelled at me. That was the first day.

Tom and Bill thought it was quite humorous.

Good luck prevailed, we didn’t see him again until Derby Day and it was not a nice experience. Someone would open the door to go outside and he would grab my arm and scream, “Tell them to use another door. I’m half sick.’

Finally the race came and Grindstone won by a nose. Everyone starts writing, except Dave Feldman.

He picks up the phone, actually he reached across the table and took Tom’s phone, called his office and screamed, “For the first time in my life, I bet enough…’

Then came a string of profanities and he slammed the phone down.

He picked the phone up, started screaming again and said, “Did I tell you for the first time in my life I bet enough, pick up AP (Associated Press) I’m never writing another story for this rag.’

Again, all of that was highlighted by very colorful language.

A third time he picked up the phone and this time he yelled: “You should run a picture of me up the flagpole, I picked that horse in this morning’s paper, and for the first time in my life I bet enough…’

Followed by more profanities.

By now no one is laughing because we were all trying to write.

Well, he picked up the phone again and this time Tom jumped up, threw the door open and glared at him.

“Where you going?’ Feldman growled.

“To jump,’ Tom said, reached over and picked up his phone, “and I’m taking this with me so the whole press box can get their job done.’